A central lesson of the Iliad is the terrifying fragility of the things that bring us together, and the importance of safeguarding them. In that spirit, it becomes a wonderful book to cook from, and turns out to be full of scenes of communality where the Greek troops mark events of social and religious significance with feasting and drinking wine.

To eat like Achilles, she invented an Homeric grilling-and-skewering technique with a boneless leg of lamb, wrapped in pork belly. But how to find wines that tasted like the ones mentioned by Homer?

In the Iliad, we learn that the wines are coming from ancient regions like Thrace, a large area in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, bounded by the Balkan Mountains to the north, the Aegean Sea to the south and the Black Sea to the east. She consulted with a couple of wine directors including Patrick Cournot of Ruffian Wine & Food in Manhattan’s East Village and found some startlingly delicious bottles that went perfectly with the grilled meat.

This wine from the Republic of Georgia is aged in clay vessels buried beneath the ground, as wine was in Homer’s time. Instead of artificial refrigeration, the Gotsa vineyard uses water flowing from the nearby mountains to create a cooler environment for fermentation, technology that would have been available in antiquity.

“So, get together with friends this weekend, folks, grill, and drink wine,” concludes Valerie Stivers. “It’s what makes us human. Reading the Iliad out loud is fun but optional.”